1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multilayer ceramic electronic component, and more particularly, to a multilayer ceramic electronic component having excellent reliability and a method of manufacturing the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, electronic components using a ceramic material, such as a capacitor, an inductor, a piezoelectric element, a varistor, a thermistor, or the like, include a ceramic body made of a ceramic material, internal electrodes formed in the ceramic body, and external electrodes mounted on external surfaces of the ceramic body so as to be connected to the internal electrodes.
Among ceramic electronic components, a multilayer ceramic capacitor includes a plurality of stacked dielectric layers, internal electrodes disposed to face each other, having the dielectric layer interposed therebetween, and external electrodes electrically connected to the internal electrodes.
Multilayer ceramic capacitors have been widely used as components in mobile communications devices such as laptop computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, and the like, due to advantages thereof such as a small size, high capacitance, ease of mounting, or the like.
In accordance with the recent trend toward electronic devices having high performance as well as compact, slim form factors, demands have been made for electronic components having a small size, high performance, and high capacitance.
In particular, as CPUs are increasingly being provided with higher speeds and the slimness, lightweightness, digitalization, and multifunctionalization of devices have increased, research into technology for implementing multilayer ceramic capacitor characteristics such as miniaturization, thinness, high capacitance, low impedance in a high frequency region, and the like, have been actively ongoing.
In particular, the internal electrodes are thinned, such that the internal electrodes have defects in connectivity thereof, which causes to deteriorate reliability of the multilayer ceramic electronic component.